Build.com reviews

3.9

78% would recommend to a friend

(310 total reviews)

Nicole Creech

52% approve of CEO

69% positive business outlook

Build.com has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 310 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Build.com employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Retail & Wholesale industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

310 reviews
3.0
Sep 25, 2017

From a manager

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Perks - Plenty of them. Free food days, parties, and swag. Employees - For the most part, fun group of people to work with. Advancement - Plenty of jobs need to be filled and there is plenty of on the job experience. If you just graduated college or want some e-comm experience that will sharpen skills, I would say put in a couple of years and move on to better things. Don't go into management.

Cons

HR - Hiring practices are awful. Candidates, both internal and external, are often left in limbo wondering whether they did/didn't get the job. This makes it impossible for managers to set goals that align with organizational expectations and often the manager is the one who gets the short end of the stick. Not to mention it's a terrible look for perspective hires. Managers are not trusted in hiring for their teams. Communication is lacking. Training - They put all managers and potential managers through a training course, and when managers want to use the skills to improve the organization, we are told it is not within the culture. Why bother teaching managers methods if executives see no value in the methods? The class is 12 weeks long! "Big Dumb Company" - This has become the excuse why we don't do more to make our business better. It's why we don't have enough development resources, or why we're not fixing what's broken. Code Green - Or what I like to the call the "figure it out" policy. Code Green is the practice of making support employees take sales calls without training them how to talk to customers, regardless or experience or comfort. It is sold by saying it's a part of our values, but what it really is is taking away our talent's ability to do their jobs. Instead of working on tasks that benefit our customer, managers and employees alike are required to take these calls. We are told "it's just an hour a day" but due to follow up, each hour balloons into 2 hours, 3 hours, call backs, checked messages, calls to vendors, calls to brands, etc. As a result, things get backed up and the site doesn't improve to fit customer's needs. Now customers are calling about a return that just hasn't been processed, by the employee who handles returns. Or the product didn't get added because, get this, the person who could have added it is taking calls. When managers complain, they are told to "figure it out". When work piles up, we're held responsible. Executive Leadership - Our CEO lives/works offsite, our COO does as well. We've had openings for key executive roles for months and the ones we've hired didn't last long. The company doesn't look to it's management staff to replace lost executives contributing to a dead end and there is no executive development training to fill the bench. Very few control too much and as a result, executives are spread too thin to actually provide good leadership.

avatar
Build.com Response
8y
Real feedback. I appreciate your passion, and no, we need people with passion offering real critiques of how we can do better. I'm going to pass this on to HR. We can do a better job communicating with potential hires and letting them know where they are in the process rather than leaving them wondering. As far as the human element, you are right there as well. We need to do better training and be more compassionate. In a company our size, there will always be free riders and I think recent messaging that should have been directed at the few was mass sprayed at the whole, which wasn't fair. For that, I apologize. We value the human element as demonstrated on what you outlined as pro's, but we can do better on clearer direction on what to do when times get tough. We can do better and will...
3.0
Jun 24, 2016

What Wikipedia Won't Tell You About Build.com

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Build.com is great for what and where it is. Being in Chico Ca, there is a monumental opportunity for new graduates and Chico locals to gain a tremendous amount of applicable career/life skills while making an above average pay for the area along with: full benefits, gym discounts, all of the standard DOT COM office perks (free snacks, games, etc). You can meet some pretty cool and genuine people here. Career Opportunities (2/5): Nepotism at its finest - the classic case of it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. If you know people in high places then expect to make a swift and timely promotion. Compensation & Benefits (4/5): For the area the pay is pretty darn good. BONUS: you don’t have to use Obama care. Work/Life Balance (3/5): It's difficult to rate this one as it really depends on what you do. Marketers, merchandisers, and programmers will often put in more than 40 hours a week. Sales folks can often put in as much time as they want to work. It’s easy to burn yourself out amongst the spacey management and other co-workers whom are trying to gain notoriety. Senior Management (2/5): It’s rare to see an “outsider” make it into a senior or executive level position. But, most of their time is spent in a meeting that was scheduled to talk about another meeting to be scheduled in the near/distant future. Culture & Values (1/5): GET THE MONEY, WORK HARD PLAY HARD, blah, blah, blah. I get it, it’s a business, and you can only survive if you’re profitable. But, are these seriously the best values being instilled in the company? Rather, what about being humble, being honest, being adventurous, and providing a positive family spirit? The general composure of the company is very indicative of GETTING THE MONEY – sad to say some of the other respectable attributes fall by the wayside.

Cons

High School reunion much? The CEO, HR and senior management teams do a great job of hyping and promoting the business to potential new hires. Sadly, if you’re not personally “making the rounds”, selling your name, and bragging about all of the hypothetical site changes that you alone thought of then you'll probably find yourself getting burnt out. Management are traditionally poor listeners and carry an essence of "Buid.com snobbery".

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Build.com Response
9y
Thank you for the review. Well thought through and I would argue fair and balanced. Your critiques are fair on many fronts. We're very growth focused, we tend to under-index on the softer benefits, and while we'd like to accommodate as many as possible viewpoints, not everyone is going to fit in our growth focused, customer focused environment. As per me responding here to your comments, I'm a VERY good listener. I take every email, anonymously or directly, very seriously. My team does the same. An email or a compini thread can be the impetus for a long discussion and subsequent policy changes or actions. I can't speak for the whole company, but one of our values is to "OWN IT" and I like to think that if we get feedback we definitely own it. Another value I often talk about is celebrating your accomplishments. If you are doing a great job, we're not always the best to notice unless you mention it to someone. As far as the weakest links go, we try and graduate people out rather than cut their throat. Its a performance based culture but we try and have heart as well. As far as changing our environment to better accommodate weak links, I appreciate the suggestion but not on my watch. The real actionable suggestion I can make for you in this job or in future jobs is that it is important to celebrate your successes and own your failures. Ideally the former outweigh the latter. If that bothers you, you may not get ahead at Build.com. I appreciate all you do, I'm glad you took the time to provide the feedback.
2.0
Mar 19, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Pays above average for Chico, work culture is above average for Chico, good place to work if you like living in Chico, good place to work if you want to fill a job description and only operate within the scope of that job description.

Cons

For being a top 100 internet retailer @500m in annual sales, the pay and culture is way behind other online retailers of similar size, revenue and age in a 200 mile radius. Its not uncommon for people to leave and make 50-100% more money than they were at Build.com. While this is true of all eCommerce (people leave for more money), the pay gaps are significantly smaller elsewhere. If you want to really advance, you have to either have been an original employee, dating a top tier employee (exec, director, etc) or be in the literal inner friends circle of the top tier employees... Build.com will deflect this by saying the people at the top have to be a 'good culture fit' but there will be a significant number of reviews that say otherwise. Also the technology aspect needs a step up... Development time for anything takes far longer than average for eCommerce. Subsequently since development takes so long, any development initiatives need executive sponsors, of whom only sponsor ideas they like... So unless you're they are your best buddy IRL, they pretty much have to come up with your idea for you if you want to see your idea executed... And when I say executed, I go into a queue with no visibility and hope that somebody takes care of it. So if your job description requires software improvements, make sure you have literally direct access to developers otherwise you're in for a world of frustration. Also, don't expect any communication of vision or passion from the executives/CEO. The CEO Chris Friedland doesn't make himself very visible in the office... You know... When he's not constantly on vacation or tending to his other 'investments'.

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Build.com Response
9y
Thank you for the response. As per your pro mention, we do pay at or above top rates for Chico and our region, however if you are taking into consideration compensation from other areas, also take into consideration cost of living too. Yes, you can make more in San Francisco, however you rent, cost of living, and commute is a wee bit higher / longer. There are a lot of people who don't get ahead at Build and often blame culture. We do have a culture where you have to raise your hand for a promotion, we don't necessarily grab people and promote them unless they apply, so its hard for people with personality types who expect to be picked up by the bootstraps as opposed to lift themselves up. Its hard to zero in on your certain situation, or understand how I can remedy this, which most of the examples don't offer a remedy. Software development in a 17 year old company, with a lot of legacy code, makes things hard. Fair to point out and a fair objection, but we have taken a lot of steps to sort this out over time, including migrating from coldfusion to Node JS. Still much work to be done. As far as projects go, most ideas that get sponsored, are bubbled up. Because software is a precious resource, we do pay a lot of attention on who gets what done. Trust me, there are 100 bad ideas for every 1 or 2 we vet and develop. Visibility has gotten much better, and so has project and product management. Its constant evolution. As the founder of the company, I try and communicate vision / passion and I'm sorry it didn't resonate with you. While Instagram may suggest otherwise, I'm not constantly on vacation... Well, I am constantly traveling... but not constantly on vacation... I actually rarely take a break fully from doing calls and answering emails even when I'm on vacation.... With the exception of Burningman, I really do take that week off from email and everything... As far as your advice goes..... I AGREE!! I do think we need new blood, new leadership, and maybe a few more micro cultures. (however its hard not be accused then of being "cliquey") however like the Internet told me someone famous said “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”. In closing, you spent 5 years of your life at Build.com. It sounds like there were good parts, bad parts, and other parts. I hope you came away a better person, as if you were here for 5 years, I'm sure you helped be a big part in our success. Best wishes in your future endeavors.
Viewing 34 - 36 of 310 Reviews

Glassdoor has 315 Build.com reviews submitted anonymously by Build.com employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Build.com is right for you.